There’s a critical mass of evildoers in government nationwide that threatens to turn Russia from a “criminalized into a criminal” country, Zorkin said in Rossiiskaya Gazeta on Friday.

The massacre in the Krasnodar region village of Kushchyovskaya that killed 12 people last month is a model of “the grafting of criminals onto officials” that is taking place across the country, Zorkin said. Investigations into the Nov. 5 murders led prosecutors to conclude that some local officials had been aiding criminal groups in terrorizing the region for more than a decade.

The population will be divided into a minority of “predators” stalking a majority of “walking beefsteaks” if such precedents become the norm, Zorkin said.

“The state will no longer be able to protect its citizens from mass violence,” Zorkin said. Such a scenario “is no longer a dystopia.”

No normalization of ties between Ukraine and Russia is likely unless the region of Crimea, now under Russian control, is returned to Kiev's sovereignty, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said Tuesday.

Boris Nemtsov, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin and Russia's role in the Ukraine crisis, has been shot dead outside the Kremlin in a murder that underscored the risks taken by the Russian opposition.

The murder of Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov has dampened any hope for a peaceful political transition in Russia away from President Vladimir Putin's government, Garry Kasparov, a prominent opposition voice, has said.

A spokesperson for Moscow's information technology department has denied media reports that some of the surveillance cameras around the Kremlin had been switched off at the time of Boris Nemtsov's murder.

The U.S. State Department and FBI have announced a $3 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Russian Yevgeny Bogachev, the highest bounty U.S. authorities have ever offered in a cyber case.